


Untitled (Perspective)

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rich Harden knowingly walks into a similarly on-going siege.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (Perspective)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted September 2004.

(zito)

You had a shit start of the season, you couldn’t locate and your curve floated down like it was magnetically attracted to the sweet spot. You couldn’t throw your change-up in the same zip code as the strike zone, and your fastball was a hitter’s gift.

Then you got good.

When your curve comes back, everything else comes back too. Suddenly you’re getting swinging third strikes on chin-high fastballs and placing the change-up on the corner of the plate so perfectly you almost can’t believe it yourself.

Mark Mulder watches you all the time, clean blue eyes, comes up behind you when you’re playing cards shirtless in the clubhouse, warm awareness on the back of your neck, buzzing at the line of your hair. But he doesn’t talk to you anymore.

It took you six months, true, but you got over it. It’s his turn now.

He lets a little scrap of hair grow under his lower lip, barely visible until you get up close, a patchy blonde color that blends into his skin. Sometimes, you wonder what that would feel like on your throat, your stomach, but it looks kind of dumb, so you don’t dwell on it.

You wake up in the morning with bruises on the backs of your arms, your mouth numb and your neck aching. You wake up with the cold hill-light of Pacific Heights trailing in your open bedroom window, and you drink coffee on the balcony, barefoot with the frozen metal searing white diamonds into the soles of your feet. You learn everything you can about British Columbia.

The team gets swept by the Red Sox and everything goes to hell. September is your month, the best month, it’s what you look forward to all year long. But the line-up stops hitting, the fielders start fumbling and double-clutching and Eric Chavez is getting skinnier and skinnier and no one seems to know why.

Out in Walnut Creek, the rims on Bobby Crosby’s new truck shine like pinwheels, and the cherry tree in the backyard has got some kind of weird disease, the limbs busted and hanging off on broken hinges. You lie around on the kid’s bed, the door closed, and talk about change-ups, hockey, the good guitar chord sites online.

The kid hardly ever smiles. You think it’s a Canadian thing, something hard and northern. You needle him, you tease, you’re charming and funny as hell, and when he finally slants you a reluctant grin, you feel like you’ve just dusted the curve for a punch-out.

You hear footsteps in the hallway and you laugh a little bit louder to be heard through the walls. The kid lets you pull his shirt off him and flatten him against the carpet, his collarbones under your hands, and he gazes up at you with his slow sleepy eyes, always looking bored, always looking far away, and his eyes are a very familiar shade of blue.

He doesn’t say your name, doesn’t say anything, just exhales sharply into the dent of your shoulder and grips your back tightly, his arms trembling and he’s so young you’re scared you’ll break him. His face flushes and he bites his lower lip, lazily corkscrews his hips into you. You bury your face against his neck, your overgrown hair half-covering his face, blown up by his whistled mouth, and you hope the bedroom door is unlocked.

Mulder wins his seventeenth, major league leading, and then stumbles, falls, all at once frozen with terror. It’s not a slump, it’s not an aberration, it’s a nosedive, it’s a leap off the thirtieth floor, and a week into your favorite September, your team’s only won a single game.

Everybody knows whose fucking fault this is.

*

(crosby)

You see strange stuff. You try not to, but you live in the fucking house.

You see Zito’s shirts coming through the laundry, a pair of his sneakers left forgotten on the pool deck, the laces still knotted and waiting. You find an unopened pack of photographs in one of the pack-rat drawers in the kitchen.

Chavvy on Mulder’s back, his arms around Mulder’s neck and Mulder’s hands under the backs of Chavez’s knees, both of them red-faced and laughing. Zito with one eye scrunched shut, sighting down the length of his arm, holding an empty bottle like a gun, aimed at Tim Hudson’s chest. Mark Ellis and Miguel Tejada with their arms around each other’s shoulders, both of them grinning broadly with their chests out, proud. Guys you don’t know, you’ve never met, never seen except in the uniforms of other teams, Adam Piatt, Frank Menechino, Billy Koch. Tim Hudson with shorn brown hair, Barry Zito with a spiky navy-blue dye job. Twenty-three years old, twenty-four, as old as you are now, so fucking young.

Your bedroom door is open a crack and you see Zito slip sideways out of Harden’s room, his belt wrapped around his hand, glancing nervously down the hall. You see Mulder and Zito move around each other like they’re totally unaware the other exists. You watch Rich, but he never gives anything away, he’s as impassive and quiet as ever.

You’re going to be the Rookie of the Year, but you haven’t been able to hit, not for months now. Your average is below .250 and you fling yourself headlong after liners into the hole, no chance to catch them, but needing to do something, needing to feel the slam of the field on your chest, the scrape of your elbows on the dirt. You’re hitting in the nine-hole when Marco’s not starting, and you’re trying not to understand anything.

Mulder comes and stands over you as you lie on the deck, his thin shadow across your chest. You squint up at him and he’s just an outline, his face black with the sun behind him. He pours the last quarter of his water bottle out on your stomach and face, and you yelp, roll away, your shoulder road-rashed on the concrete. You holler his name, and scramble up to your knees, but he’s already gone.

You can’t for the life of you figure out how to get a ball to drop fair. You’re praying for walks, long ten-pitch walks, you hack away at the edges of the strike-zone to stay alive. You study film, you study scouting reports, you look for sinkers at the knee and you sit on 3-1 fastballs, but even when you get one, you can’t do a thing with it.

When you get an ever-so-rare hit, Mulder’s the first one to the front of the dugout, and Zito’s eyes are on his back, Zito rising slowly and obligatorily holding out his fist for you to knock. Mulder bangs you on the helmet and smothers you with his long arms, and you try to fight away, feeling like a little brother.

You play video games all night long, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Splinter Cell, until your eyes are bloodshot and your thumbs sore. Harden sits slumped on the couch, his legs sprawling open, a Coke held tenderly on his knee, watching everything with his motionless lizard’s eyes. Mulder crows over every victory and snarls through every defeat, and leans his shoulder against you unconsciously. Adam Melhuse wanders through and folds himself into the corner of the couch, talking shit and slurring like he’s drunk.

Mulder sits cross-legged on your bed while you surf the internet, keeping up a steady ramble that you don’t have to really follow or respond to, because he’ll keep talking regardless. You get used to his flat accent and the steady thrum of his voice, in the back of your mind as you check bands’ tour dates and read everything you can find about the pitchers you’ll face next.

You shut down your computer and flop on your back on the bed, sighing explosively and lifting your arm to cover your eyes. You’ve never played as many games as this, and you’re still a rookie, no matter how long you’ve been here. You’re tired, unimaginably tired, and sore all over.

You feel Mulder’s knee resting lightly against your side, you feel him shift. You feel his hand on your chest, heavy and flat, hot through your T-shirt, and your eyes fly open. You catch him by the wrist and gape up at him. He’s looking cool and perfect the way he always looks, and for a moment you remember how much you wanted him to like you when you first joined the team, how much you wanted to be like him.

Now his face is expressionless, and you start to stutter, “Wh-wuh-what,” eyes huge and flooded with shock, but he doesn’t let you finish, snatching his hand off you and stalking to the door, his shoulders stiff and his back as straight as a board.

He leaves and you lie there, stunned, the shape of his hand outlined like a metal burn on your chest.

You see a lot of stuff. You know more now than you ever wanted to.

*

(chavez)

You broke your hand and at least part of you was a little bit glad, figuring that would be the worst thing that would happen to you this year, and it happened in June, and it wasn’t so bad.

You got off the DL a week earlier than they thought in their most optimistic estimates, but you’ve always been ahead of the curve. You’ve learned how to hit left-handed pitching. You’ve learned how to rake lefties, finding the outside pitch and taking it opposite field, staying away from the high junk and the cliff-diving splits that look so tempting until the bottom falls out of them fifteen feet in front of the plate.

You’re having a good year, five lost weeks shy of spectacular, and you’re sleeping on the living room couch more often than not, chased away by Alex’s brittle gaze and the way she jerks instinctively away from you when you go to touch her.

You fight with Mulder and you fight with Zito, who’ve both become absolute dicks, and Jermaine Dye is your new best friend. You know something happened in the off-season but you’re not sure what. You just know that there are these splinters, these long fractures in the clubhouse, silences that scream with accusation, wicked looks and sharp bit-off insults that once would have been jokes.

Something’s gone so wrong this year.

By September, you’re out of place at third base as you have not been since Class A when you were nineteen years old and in the process of being converted shortstop. You dive and the ball is past your glove. You charge sharply-hit grounders and the bad hop shoots up over your shoulder, into the grass. You muff barehanded grabs, and double-clutch, you double-clutch all the fucking time. You let the rookie take as much as he can reach, suddenly unsure of your own ability, and if the rook can’t hit, that hasn’t slowed his hands on the field any, he’s still swift and fall-in-love smooth picking up the plays that you should have made.

All you think about is baseball, how to fix this. You don’t eat as much as you should, so, actually, the reason you’ve lost weight the way you have is no big mystery. You try to pray, you try to ask for help, but you can’t shake the awareness that you were alone when you found God, and you’re not alone now, you shouldn’t need Him anymore. You kiss your crucifix before every game, bright silver on your lips.

You crash at the Walnut Creek house sometimes, but you’re more likely to get a hotel room when you can’t take the decayed tension of your home anymore. It’s pretty bad at Mulder’s place too, you can tell that just walking in the door.

The rookie comes up to you in the weight room, waiting until you finish your rep and let the machine metallically clack into set position again. He hands you a towel and you wipe your face off, breathing hard and the muscles in your arms are on fire. You angle him a questioning look and he swallows, not meeting your eyes and asking hesitantly, “Uh, is Mulder . . . you know, and um, Zito, are they . . .”

You hook the towel around your neck, pulling down to feel the rough cotton chafe on your skin, and you say, “Shut up, rook.”

You stand and walk away, your legs shaking from the workout, go see if JD wants to play on the arcade machine with you.

You’ve been here so long. You’ll be here forever. It’s the only place you want to be, and these guys are the only guys you want to play with. Even the way it is now, drained and scared all the time, you still wouldn’t trade places with anyone else.

You’ve been here since the beginning. You saw them come up, Huddy first and then Mulder and Zito together, you’ve lived and breathed with them for five years now, and you know more than you’ve ever let on, you know more than you’ve ever even admitted to yourself.

You don’t want them ruined like this. Any way but like this.

*

(harden)

You’re the only one on the staff who’s pitching with anything like consistency. You are, in fact, the best starter Oakland’s got since the All-Star break, which is something you never thought you’d be.

You miss Canada. You miss the wilderness of the Northern Territories where you used to go camping every year with a bunch of guys from your high school team. You miss the six-hour days and eighteen-hour nights on the steep curve of the earth. You miss the cold, and you miss your family.

You don’t talk a lot, because you don’t really have anything to say. These guys, California boys, Chicago boys, dirty South boys, all these American boys, they talk so quick, they ricochet back and forth and pick up the loose ends of every conversation before it can even hit the ground. You can’t keep up, half the time.

You pitch. You fuck Zito and you let him fuck you, because it seems like a good idea at the time. When you first showed up, the middle of last year, depth of the summer, you thought he was the kindest, the one least likely to ever do anything to hurt you. You couldn’t see any bad in him, just a kid’s charm and a careless smile.

You were pretty far off, it turns out. Turns out you can’t read people for shit.

But you’re not the one Zito’s looking to tear down, so you shrug, you let your eyes fall to half-mast, you think, ‘yeah, well, whatever.’

Mulder knuckles you on the arm, tries to kick your legs out from under you as you stumble out of the bar, and you catch your balance like an infielder, brace your feet and whirl back to sock him in the chest, because maybe you’re twenty-two years old, but you’re not a fucking punk.

You’re good, right now, on a team that can’t win two in a row, a team that is slow-motion drowning and dragging each other down trying to stay above water.

Zito hisses “Richie,” and bites your lip, and you arch back, arch up, your eyes closed and you can see an endless plain of snow, you can see the world white and smooth and uncomplicated, and you smile, you smile and when you fall asleep, you dream about curveballs.

*

(mulder)

You don’t know what the fuck is wrong. You don’t get it.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Not to you. To Zito, fine, the way it was in the first half, that was almost half-expected, you’ve been waiting for him to crash from on high for four years now, and it certainly took him long enough.

But not to you. There are reasons behind what you do, why you are, there is logic and there is rationality and there is motherfucking purpose. You’ve never pitched this bad for this long, and you’re not hurt, for once, you’re not hurt.

You’re overthrowing everything, you can’t hit your spots. When you need to make a big pitch, you just . . . don’t. For awhile, Curt and the other coaches agree that it’s mechanical. You’ve lengthened your stride, which has fucked up the evenness of your delivery. Your arm angles are ever-so-slightly off, just enough to tip your pitches, just enough to change the trajectory so your slider cuts a foot off the plate and your change-up never even gets close. But you fix the mechanical problems and you feel good, you feel confident, and then you get the shit hit out of you by the Blue Jays.

It makes no sense.

The first half was so amazing, you couldn’t quite get a grip on it. For two straight months, you did not lose, and you were running away with everything. Even when you pitched bad, the offense picked you up, seven runs when you allowed four, ten runs when you allowed six. They wouldn’t let you lose, and you were perfect.

Your win streak even included the fucking All-Star Game, so how did this happen?

Zito makes sure you see him coming and going, in and out of the kid’s door, laughter and gasped curses that you can hear, yeah you can hear, you can remember. The kid just stares with those creepy fucking eyes of his, and you’re never quite sure if he’s not mocking you behind the blue. You can’t figure the fucker out, and you’re not sure you want to.

Bobby comes to find you a week after you touched his chest, because you thought he wanted you to, you honestly did, lying there with his arm over his eyes, his T-shirt tugged up to show a rip of his stomach, because you’re a fucking idiot, and he comes to find you.

“I . . . I don’t want things to . . . get weird,” he says, his voice tight with fear, standing awkwardly in your bedroom door, twisting his fingers in the hem of his shirt. He’s all earnest good-hearted expression and stick-out ears, too sweet, really, to be a major league ballplayer just yet, should have spent another year or two in the minors, got toughened up.

He’ll get tough in the bigs, eventually, it’ll just scar him deeper.

“Nothing’s weird,” you answer flatly, and you’re not looking at him. He and Zito are honestly nothing alike. Zito’s funnier. Bobby likes you better, maybe more than Zito ever did. Zito makes you feel like this terrible stretch is making you feel, out of control, too far gone to be saved.

The rookie is still standing there, his mouth open stupidly, so you flick a hand through the air, snap, “Get the fuck out of here, man.”

And he goes, because he always does what you tell him to.

You want to call Tim, confess this, because Tim’s smarter than all the rest of you put together, and Tim would say something that would make you feel better, something deep and drawled that might make you laugh again. But Tim’s not pitching well either, this awful stagger towards October, and Tim’s always pretended he doesn’t know shit about shit.

Last winter, you had to do what you did. You had to. You wouldn’t have gotten through, otherwise, and he should be smart enough to fucking realize that. He’s been so mad at you for so long, and you didn’t think you cared, it was just background noise to your life.

But now he’s not mad at you anymore. He’s not mad at you, he doesn’t even see you anymore, and he’s pitching better than you are, everyone’s pitching better than you are, and your team is breaking into pieces, now when it counts the most, your team is falling apart and it started with you.

It was a landmine. It was just waiting for you to be on the verge of everything.

It wouldn’t count if it didn’t do this kind of damage. It wouldn’t count if you could escape it unmarked.

Marks are nothing now—now all you can do is pray that you’ll make it out alive.

THE END


End file.
